The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is
effectively “dead and buried” now that President Donald J. Trump has
indicated a move away from multilateral trading blocs, a conservative
think tank has said.

On Monday, just days after taking the reins at the Oval Office,
President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the controversial Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) which sought to create a trading bloc between America
and 11 other countries, including Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

The deal, a central plank of former President Barack Obama’s trade
policy, had been lauded by globalists for its geo-political, as well as
economic, significance. But Trump was unimpressed, calling the order to
dismiss it a “great thing for the American worker”.

Addressing reporters during a ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump
added: “We want to start making our products again. We don’t want to
bring them in, we want to make them here.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t trade because we do, but we want to make our products here.”

Speaking to an audience at a think tank event in Brussels today, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström conceded that Trump’s rhetoric meant that TTIP was, if not dead, certainly on ice for the time being.

“The
election of Donald Trump seems likely to put our EU–US negotiations
firmly in the freezer at least for a while,” she said. “Yet, even if the
US is our most important partner, and a necessary one, the world is
bigger than one country.

“Trump or no Trump, we have a long list of many others willing to
deal with the EU, and about 20 more trade deals already in the
pipeline.”

Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Bow Group, Britain’s oldest
conservative think tank, told Breitbart London that the rhetoric from
the two leaders effectively signalled the end, not only of TTIP, but of
the age of multilateral trade. He said:

2016 marked a move away from multinational multilateral
blocs and a return to bi-lateral trade and relations. The nation state
is central again..

Even pre-Brexit and Trump, TTIP was effectively dead; it’s now dead and buried in a concrete casket.

TTIP has the rare accolade of being unpopular with the right and
left. If anything like it does return, it will be in different form, and
many, many years from now.

His words echoed those of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer,
who, commenting on the decision to withdraw from TPP, said the Trump
administration wants “free and fair trade” around the world.

Instead, the new President’s government “will pursue bilateral trade
opportunities with allies around the globe”, Spicer told reporters at
his maiden news conference on Monday, adding: “When you’re entering into
these multilateral agreements you’re allowing any country, no matter
the size, any one of those 12, including us, to basically have the same
stature of the U.S. in the agreement.”

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